


A Rejection of Fate

by PJO_Connoisseur



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:35:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24527746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PJO_Connoisseur/pseuds/PJO_Connoisseur
Summary: Most people wait their whole lives to meet their soulmate and have their picture-perfect life together. Nico and Will, on the other hand, have never been ones for convention, covering their soulmate tattoos and taking a leap of faith.
Relationships: Nico di Angelo/Will Solace
Comments: 17
Kudos: 186





	A Rejection of Fate

When Nico di Angelo is in kindergarten, he and an older kid want the same truck at recess, so she punches him in the arm, takes the toy, and walks away in triumph. He is crying, unheard by the teacher, when Will Solace finds him. Nico has never paid much attention to Will before this moment; Will was hardly the only spirited blonde in his class. But right now Will is kneeling beside him and asking him if he’s okay. His eyes are the same color as the lake where Nico goes swimming with his older sister Bianca and younger sister Hazel, and the familiarity makes Nico feel at ease. So does Will’s voice, which comes out eager but soothing nonetheless. Will has a fanny pack strapped to his hip, which he explains is filled with the first aid supplies his mother gave him. He brags that he’s going to be a doctor, which Nico doesn’t believe for a second. Even though Nico isn’t bleeding, Will plasters a bandage to his arm to give him the comforting illusion of healing. 

Nico has never paid much attention to Will before this moment, but he knows then and there that’s about to change.

*******

Nico is ten and playing a board game with Will when his dad takes him and Hazel aside to tell them Bianca is dead. Nico’s only experience with death has been with one of his grandmas, at which point he was sad, but at least it hadn’t come out of nowhere. She was old and they were expecting it. But Bianca was twelve, and twelve-year-olds weren’t supposed to die. When his father explains she pushed a six-year-old out of the way of traffic and was hit herself, Nico feels this is an appropriately heroic death for his sister, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead, his father allows him to slam the door in his face.

He cries on Will’s shoulder for the rest of the night without explaining. They have the kind of friendship where they don’t need to explain. 

Will and Hazel hold each of Nico’s hands at the funeral, and they observe Bianca’s body at the same time, huddling together as if for protection. Bianca looks exactly as she did in life but also wrong somehow, like a perfect clone Nico instinctively knows is someone else. He eyes the soulmate tattoo on her arm and thinks about how her soulmate will spend their entire life searching for someone they’ll never find and wonders if that could be considered a kind of grief. He thinks about his father losing his soulmate, their mother, years ago, and how her death permanently tore off a part of him. Nico decides then and there that when his soulmate tattoo appears when he turns twelve, he’s going to cover it. 

He does not cry, because he has already cried enough to fill the lake he, Bianca, and Hazel used to swim in, and he has no tears left. This moment is the first time he realizes Bianca will never swim with them again. She’ll never do  _ anything _ with them again, and he wants someone to blame, but he has no face to put to the hit-and-run driver who killed her, so the anger stays within him. When he, Will, and Hazel return to the pew, he has no tears left, but he cries anyway.

Nico learns three things following his sister’s death: the universe is callous and uncaring, bitterness festers and grows like cancer, and he will always have Will and Hazel by his side

*******

A few days before Nico’s twelfth birthday, Will comes over unannounced and collapses into his arms to cry. Between strangled sobs Nico pieces together what happened. Will’s parents got married despite mismatching soulmate tattoos, despite not being soulmates. His father recently found his soulmate, and they’re getting a divorce.

When he’s done crying, Will declares he wants nothing to do with soulmates, and Nico reveals the decision he made two years ago. When Nico’s birthday comes, he refuses to look at the tattoo that appears on his arm and blindly covers it with a big bandage. When Will’s birthday comes two months later, he does the same. The bandages only come off to shower, and neither of them have ever seen their own tattoos or each others.

This, they decide, is how they can take control of their fate.

*******

Nico is thirteen when he gets his first girlfriend. Her name is Amy, and her long blonde hair is always in a braid with a bow at the end. At lunch he sits between her and Will, and sometimes they go for walks around town together holding hands. Amy is pretty, and Nico knows the other boys envy him, but at lunch his gaze is always drawn to Aaron, a boy in his grade, and Aaron is who he thinks about when he’s holding her hand. 

A few weeks after they begin dating, Amy is annoyed that Nico covers his soulmate tattoo, but she still gives him his first kiss under the slide at recess. He feels nothing, and his lack of reaction makes Amy dump him. Although he’s seen his classmates be devastated over breakups, Nico is more relieved than anything. Relieved and then terrified, because when she kissed him, for a split moment he wished it was Aaron kissing him. 

This is the first secret he keeps from Will.

*******

Nico gets his license on his sixteenth birthday, and to celebrate Will insists they get ice cream even though it’s late January and there’s snow outside. Even so, Nico has never been one to turn down ice cream, so they go to McDonald’s after school and drink their shakes in a corner booth. Will inhales his ice cream, unfazed by the inevitable brain freeze, while Nico fiddles with his straw. A rainbow pin is burning a hole in Nico’s pocket, and he doesn’t know how to tell Will.

Will notices how Nico isn’t eating and can’t sit still. His hand finds Nico’s on the booth between them, under the table where no one will see. When he asks Nico what’s wrong, his eyes are wide with worry, big and blue like an ocean Nico could fall into it. An ocean he could drown in if this goes badly. After having Will as his best friend for a little over ten years, Nico can’t imagine losing him over something like this. When he fidgets in place, he’s certain he can feel the pin burning through his jeans, though his skin, through his bones. He hasn’t felt this powerless since Bianca died.

When he finally tells Will he’s gay, it takes all of him not to run. Will’s stare is uncharacteristically blank for several mile-long seconds, and then he laughs. What takes Nico off-guard is less the laughter and more the undertone, one of relief. That McDonald’s booth commemorates Nico’s first coming out, but also Will’s as he tells Nico he thinks he’s pan. When they hug, Nico relaxes against him, the weight of the world off his shoulders.

Will chews his lip and takes out a pink, yellow, and blue striped pin, admitting he’d been too scared to wear it. Nico laughs and takes out his own. Together they clip their pins to their backpacks.

The pins never leave their bags for the rest of high school.

*******

Nico and Will are on opposite ends of the stage at their graduation, but that doesn’t stop them from making eye contact for the entire ceremony. Will is valedictorian, and when he becomes nervous and trips over his words, he makes eye contact with Nico, who gives him a subtle nod. Will smiles at that and slides through his speech until the end. Hayden di Angelo is absent, but Naomi Solace cheers loud enough to make up for it as they throw their graduation caps into the air. 

After the ceremony they spend the night at Will’s house playing video games. Soon they’ll be starting their full-time summer jobs to pay for college in the fall, but right now they relax and excitedly discuss the future. They’re going to the same school with Will in pre-med to become a doctor and Nico studying history to become a teacher. As much as they’re eager to be done with school, they also take comfort in the prospect of being ‘real adults’ feeling far away.

It goes without saying that they will always be in each other’s lives.

*******

Nico and Will are advised to get randomly assigned roommates as a way of meeting people and making friends. They ignore this advice and room together anyway. Their room is tiny and their window overlooks the parking lot, but this feels like a small price to pay for their first major taste of independence. They bunk their beds to conserve space, use the bookshelf as a TV stand, and hang their respective pride flags side by side on the wall.

When classes start Will effortlessly makes friends, but he always has time for Nico. Eventually he convinces Nico to meet some of his friends, and soon they’re Nico’s friends, too. Despite only being a freshman, Annabeth has already decided she’s going to get her doctorate, and she shoots her high school boyfriend and soulmate Percy withering glares when he jokes about dropping out before the end of the year. 

At the end of their first semester, Nico and Will study together for their finals, both using food bribes to get the other to keep going. Will ends up with a better GPA than Nico, but he doesn’t rub it in, and they get soft serve in the cafeteria to celebrate their first successful semester. On the way back to their dorm afterward, a bike comes wheezing down the path out of nowhere. Will grabs Nico’s hand, pulling him out of the way, and Nico’s skin tingles. When he lets go, Nico is disappointed. He’s not sure when he began wanting to hold Will’s hand, but his gut tells him it wasn’t a recent development. 

That night Nico listens to Will’s soft breathing as he sleeps in the bunk above him, imagining what it would be like to play with Will’s hair until he fell asleep in Nico’s arms. Part of Nico screams at him to shut down that thought, but a stronger, less controllable part of him instead pictures holding Will’s hand, cuddling with him on the couch, and kissing him soft and slow. The images warm him only temporarily, as the next second his blood runs cold. He has found a new way to be terrified of his feelings. 

This is the second secret he keeps from Will.

*******

Nico and Will are roommates again the following year. Only a couple weeks pass before a girl from Will’s anatomy class asks him out, and when he asks Nico how he should respond, Nico can tell there’s a right answer and a wrong answer, but Nico isn’t sure which is which. Nico looks everywhere but Will’s eyes when he tells him to go for it, and this becomes one of the rare instances in their friendship when Nico can’t read his best friend’s expression. As Nico helps Will pick out a shirt for his date, he wonders if it’s possible to choke to death on all the feelings he’s swallowed.

Nico lays awake long past the time when he normally would have gone to bed, staring at the ceiling and picking at the edge of the bandage on his arm. For the first time in his life, he seriously considers looking at his soulmate tattoo. Seven years later and he still doesn’t know what it looks like. Every day he watches people pass, displaying their tattoos, hoping they’ll stumble upon their soulmate and get their destined happily ever after. He considers proposing that he and Will finally see each other’s tattoos. If they’re soulmates, they can be together, and if not, maybe it would allow Nico to move on.

But then he thinks about Bianca again, and the decision he made over her casket, and how soulmates tore Will’s family apart, and secondhand resentment bubbles under his skin, threatening to boil him alive. He still stands by the assessment he made almost a decade ago: soulmates are a burden, not a gift, and he’ll take no part in it. His resolve to hide his tattoo will probably make dating harder, but he doesn’t care. Fate has no control over him.

When Will arrives home Nico whips out his phone and opens Instagram, pretending he was doing that all along and not debating with himself. He’s nonchalant when he asks how the date was, as if he was no investment in the matter. When Will doesn’t answer Nico looks up to find his best friend standing beside his bed, his face crestfallen and his hands in his pockets. Nico turns off his phone and sets it aside, waiting, because he knows he doesn’t need to ask. Will was always much more forthcoming with his emotions than Nico.

Will sits beside Nico on his bed, fingering the buttons on his blue button-up but not undoing them. Nico picked that shirt because it matched his eyes, eyes that became more mesmerizing the more Nico fell in love with him. Will’s voice is a whisper when he tells Nico he couldn’t go on the date and was wandering campus for hours.

Nico knows he should feel bad because Will does, but he can’t help the wave of relief that washes over, although he keeps it out of his voice when he asks what happened. 

Will is quiet for so long Nico would have thought he fell asleep had it not been for his open eyes. When he finally speaks his voice is even lower, and it’s an apology Nico can’t begin to fathom the reason for. Will sighs, slumps over in defeat, and tells him that he’s in love with him. His face is red, and it’s not until Nico puts a hand on Will’s knee that Nico realizes he’s trembling. Will’s anxiety is rolling off him in waves that he’s clearly drowning in.

Will has always been an action-over-words kind of person, so instead of answering, Nico turns Will’s face toward him with one hand and kisses him. The kiss is five times as awkward as Nico had imagined it would be, but it’s also ten times as sweet, setting off all of his senses at once. He is engrossed in Will’s touch as if it were his favorite novel, destined to be read over and over for the rest of his life. 

When they pull back, both of their faces are red, but they’re grinning like dorks and place their foreheads together. They both know a monumental shift has taken place without having to say it. Will’s eyes drift to Nico’s bandage and his fingertips brush over it, and Nico can hear the lump in Will’s throat when he asks if they should check. Despite his renewed resolve earlier that day, Nico hesitates. After a few minutes thick with thought, they decide they choose each other regardless.

Their soulmate tattoos remain a mystery.

*******

After graduation Nico and Will move into their first apartment together, each of them filled with exhilaration and terror in equal measures. As Nico sets down the final moving box, he tells Will Bianca always told him that if a prospect was exhilarating and terrifying in equal measures, that means it’s a good idea. Nico is on his way to getting his teaching license, and Will starts medical school in the fall.

When the last box is unpacked, they stand side-by-side in their tiny studio apartment with their arms around each other’s waists. For the first time in their lives, they feel like real, full-fledged adults, and that too is exhilarating and terrifying in equal measures. The world feels bigger than it did before, and Nico can’t help but feel it is his and Will’s for the taking. Will always says the world is a blank canvas on which they are free to paint whatever they want, and Nico finally believes him.

Life is messy for a while, but at some point they settle into a routine. Nico makes breakfast and packs lunches before he goes to work and Will goes to class. They take turns making dinner based on Will’s schedule, and whoever doesn’t cook does the dishes. On Wednesdays they go grocery shopping together, and on weekends they turn on the  _ Mamma Mia! _ soundtrack and sing along while they do chores together. Their favorite forms of relaxation and intimacy become giving each other massages and cuddling while watching  _ Tidying Up with Marie Kondo _ . Percy and Annabeth come to visit at least once a month. Sundays are dinner with Hazel and her soulmate Frank, and on Thursdays they take a painting class together, with Nico discovering a hidden talent for it. Soon their apartment is filled with their artwork, and even though Will’s paintings aren’t nearly as good as Nico’s, Nico insists they all are hung.

One day Will comes home with a stray cat he rescued from the rain. He says it’s only to nurse it back to health, but they both know that cat is as good as theirs now. The gray ball of fur is dubbed Alfie, and Alfie likes Hazel more than either of his owners.

When Nico looks at Will, Hazel, Frank, and Alfie gathered together on the couch after a Sunday dinner, he knows this is what his family is meant to look like.

*******

Hazel graduates college two years after Nico, and although their father is too busy to attend, she is unfazed, with Nico, Will, and Frank being the only people she desires to see in the crowd. Hugs and cheek kisses go around after the ceremony, but Hazel keeps biting her lip, a tell that she’s hiding something. Nico barely has to prod her before she bursts, showing off her left hand. A thin silver band is on her ring finger.

Frank goes red as Nico and Will congratulate them on the engagement. Hazel, meanwhile, chatters about how she and Frank had discussed getting married and ending up proposing on the same day. She gushes about the proposals and the wedding planning, and Nico’s chest fills with affection for her. Her happiness has always been his happiness as well.

When she’s done recounting everything, she pokes her brother and asks when he and Will are tying the knot. Will blushes, but Nico messes with her hair and answers maybe they will when Will is done with med school. Hazel sprinkles in teasing throughout the celebration dinner that night, but it’s all good-natured. Still, Nico finds himself glancing at Will as they hold hands, imagining him all dressed up on their wedding day and saying their vows.

Nico is certain he’s never wanted anything more.

*******

Hazel’s wedding occurs the following year. Everything at the venue is white and gold, and Hazel practically skips down the aisle, shamelessly crying the entire time. Although it’s an overall traditional event, Nico is Hazel’s best man, and it takes all his self-control not to cry when he sees how thrilled she looks. Hazel chose to keep the father-daughter dance, but she dances it with Nico, who is more than happy to spin her around the dance floor while she laughs. The melody of her laughter rivals that of the music they’re dancing to.

When the dance floor opens up to all the guests, Will drags Nico onto it without a second thought, and by the end of the night, Nico is sure his legs aren’t going to be functional in the morning. He decides this is a worthy sacrifice. The night is one Nico knows will stick in his memory even if it weren’t for the photos. During the last dance Nico is looking in Will’s eyes when he decides he’s going to propose. They’ve discussed the prospect before, and now it’s just a matter of formally proposing, and Will deserves the best proposal in the world.

With it being the weekend Nico is free to stay up half the night planning. Will has always been the hopeless romantic in their relationship, and Nico figures it’s time to return the favor. After finding success in painting, Nico has since taken up ceramics, causing Will to joke Nico is good with his hands followed by a wink. Nico does not deny that. Normally Nico shows Will progress pictures of what he’s working on at the pottery studio he goes to, but now he ‘forgets’ to do so. Over the years Nico has been pretty shameless about gifting Will medically-themed decor and tools, but Will likes the cheesiness, and that’s what he’s leaning into this time around.

Will is home from school when Nico comes home with his handiwork, a sweatshirt encasing it in lieu of wrapping paper. He sets it in front of Will at their kitchen island, saying nothing but broadly grinning as Will unveils the life-size, anatomically correct heart that took hours and many small tools to craft. Nico’s heart swells as Will examines it in wonder, praising the accuracy. The only disturbance in the realism is the flattened bottom so it can stand on its own and the thin line halfway up where the halves come apart.

Nico has to put active effort into not bouncing on his heels when he tells Will he thinks the heart has something lodged in it. Will raises an eyebrow, but as always he goes with it, removing the top of the heart and reaching into the cavernous inside to pull out a bundle of fabric. Nico gets down on one knee with clasped hands as Will unwraps the fabric and finds a simple gold ring with a single, tiny sapphire in it. Will says yes before Nico can say his line about Will having stolen his heart, and the passionate kiss that follows leads to their bedroom, where they spend the rest of the night celebrating.

Nico knows that no matter what, he and Will will always choose each other.

*******

The wedding venue is a park filled with cherry trees, the decorations all in blue and black, a color for each of them. The ceremony is small. Neither of them have groomsmen, and in attendance are only Hazel, Frank, Naomi, Percy, and Annabeth. Percy and Annabeth got married a couple years ago, and Annabeth is currently pregnant with their first child. During the first dance Nico makes fun of Will for crying during his vows, but Will makes fun of Nico for  _ also _ crying during  _ his _ vows. Despite all the witnesses Nico vehemently denies he did any such thing. While they dance they kiss as if no one is watching.

When the party is over they decide they’ll reveal their tattoos to each other when they’re dying.

*******

Two years later Hazel gives birth to a baby boy she and Frank name Jasper. Jasper has Hazel’s dark skin and Frank’s large mass and cries nonstop, but Nico and Will still voluntarily babysit. While Hazel and Frank take the time off to have date nights, Nico watches Will as his husband tells the baby dramatic stories he can’t understand. When Nico teases him over it, Will winks and tells him he’s practicing for when they adopt.

They discussed adopting a kid down the line a million years ago when they first moved in together, but this is the first time the prospect has been brought up since then. Nico beams, his stomach swarming with butterflies at the thought of adopting with Will. With Will still in residency and no house, it’s not the right time yet, but that future is within reach. 

Nico walks over to Will, kisses him senseless, and tells him he can’t wait.

*******

Two years later, when Nico and Will are both thirty, the time is right. They buy their first house, a small, two-bed, one-bath home in their city. They intentionally pick one near the high school where Nico works, the elementary school they’ll send their future child to, and the place where Nico and Will are still taking art classes together on Thursdays. Will is done with his residency, and they settle into a new routine. With his new job Will isn’t around as much, but they make the most of the time they do have together, still giving each other massages and cuddling while they watch  _ Tidying Up with Marie Kondo _ .

The adoption process they began before purchasing the house finishes a few months later. Their daughter Sasha is five-years-old with big brown eyes, and Nico already knows that she’s going to have Will wrapped around her finger. They soon find Sasha is a precocious child, already starting to read in kindergarten even though lessons don’t normally start until first grade. They foster her love of reading, getting her a library card and taking her for weekly library trips. Each night at dinner they ask her what she’s been reading and fondly listen to her chatter away.

At their first Christmas together, Will lifts Sasha so she can put the star on the tree. He and Nico splurge on buying Sasha books, both ones she’d checked out from the library multiple times and ones she hasn’t read that they think she’d like. At Will’s insistence they buy her some educational books, too, and they get her a big, sturdy bookcase for her room to hold them all. The books they got her only fill a small portion of the bookcase, but they know soon it will be full and they’ll need a second bookcase. Sasha cries over the gifts.

Hazel, Frank, and Jasper come for Christmas dinner, which is a smorgasbord of pizza, mashed potatoes, fresh bread, various fruits and veggies, and way too many desserts, a result of letting Sasha help plan the meal. They have no regrets.

Sitting in front of the fireplace that night, Sasha reads Jasper a book with Alfie curled up in her lap, and Nico’s whole being fills with a desire to give her the world.

*******

Will and Nico are there for every step in Sasha’s life. She brings them her first boyfriend when she’s fifteen, Will doesn’t let Nico scare the life out of the kid, and they buy her ice cream when she goes through her first breakup. She asks Will to give a presentation in her junior anatomy class, and afterward Will hears her bragging about him to her classmates. When he tells Nico about it, he cries tears of joy while Nico squeezes his hand. That incident is one of many where they are sure they did something right in raising her. Sasha learns sign language, starts a Queer Alliance club at her school, and when she becomes valedictorian like Will, she teases it’s because of all the educational books he bought her as a child. 

When Sasha is twenty she brings home her soulmate Sam, who comes in a suit despite Sasha’s insistence that it’s unnecessary. This time Will lets Nico give a shovel talk, and although Sam’s voice trembles, he insists he’ll always protect Sasha and treat her right. Sasha rolls her eyes at that, pointing out she can protect herself, but her dads are pleased at his resilience. Sam’s soulmate status isn’t enough for the nontraditional pair, but when Sam begins visiting them without Sasha in order to bond with them, the boy wins them over. When Sasha follows in Hazel’s footsteps and gets engaged to Sam following her college graduation, they approve. 

When Nico and Will look at Sasha and Sam, they see a bit of themselves in them.

*******

Sasha and Sam chose a wedding venue halfway between each of their parents’ cities for their wedding. They play two father-daughter dances with both Nico and Will having a chance to show off their awful dance moves with their daughter. Afterward Jasper, now twenty, proves himself to be an impressive dancer, putting the rest of the guests to shame. Although the whole affair is entirely more grand than Nico and Will’s wedding, they can’t help the nostalgia for their own wedding that flows through them as they dance together. That was twelve years ago, but as Will brings Nico down into a dip wearing a thousand-watt smile, it feels like yesterday. 

When Sasha gives birth a few years later, Will and Nico visit them at the first chance the new parents allow. Sasha and Sam lightheartedly warn them that they’re not allowed to spoil her daughter the same way they spoiled Sasha when she was a kid. Will and Nico make no promises, dodging the accusation in favor of asking what name they chose.

Sasha is smiling at them, her daughter sleeping in her arms, when she tells them,  _ Bianca _ .

*******

Nico and Will both retire at age sixty. They have enough money saved for the simple, comfortable life they’ve come to revel in. Thursday painting classes are replaced by reverting Sasha’s former bedroom into their own art studio, where there is a pottery wheel and kiln in one corner and two easels sit in front of the large window overlooking the backyard garden Will tends to. At this point their house is bursting with their artwork, but they keep creating anyway, playing Tetris with the paintings and adding new tables to hold Nico’s pottery. The small heart-shaped jar Nico proposed with still sits on Will’s desk.

The only surface not taken up by the couple’s art is that used for family photos. In a large picture above the fireplace are Nico, Will, Hazel, Frank, Jasper, Sasha, Sam, and Bianca, all with smiles bright enough to rival the sun. Every time Nico looks at it, he acquires a subtle grin. This, he thinks, is his legacy. He could not have asked for better.

Each morning they sit on two identical rocking chairs on their front porch with their morning coffee. Nico makes fun of Will for using so much sugar and cream he can’t taste the coffee, while Will teases Nico for being so edgy even his coffee has to be black. On the couch in front of the fireplace is where Nico and Will spend most nights as the years pass, sipping tea, reminiscing, and talking about their days. Although their lives are not as exciting as they used to be, they are content in each other’s company and still find new things to do, new things to talk about. Each summer they take a trip with Sasha, Sam, and Bianca, who all visit regularly, and each winter they take a solo one to a different warm place. On their fortieth wedding anniversary, they go to Italy together, and Will gifts Nico a toy truck like the one stolen from him in kindergarten, and Nico cries into his shoulder, unable to believe he remembered.

Between the old comforts and the new adventures, the spark in their relationship never dies. Some days it feels like they, too, will never die.

That feeling is knocked out of them by Percy’s death. After the funeral Will fusses over Nico’s health more than ever, forcing him to use his cane and take daily vitamins. Whenever Nico is careless and winds up with an injury, Will puts a bandage on it regardless of whether or not it is bleeding, just as he once did. Nico insists Will’s precautions are unnecessary, but he acquiesces anyway to give his husband the peace of mind.

Ironically it is Will’s health that begins to decline first. 

They are seventy, and though they have long since lost their parents they remember how their physical and mental facilities eroded. In a way that reminds them of their early life decision to reject soulmates, they agree to reject this fate as well. They will decide on their own when and how they will die.

Annabeth visits for the first time since Percy died to say her goodbyes. Sasha and her family come next, and their goodbyes are almost enough to make Nico second guess their decision. But then he remembers his father’s anguish as he became increasingly dependent on others and how Naomi’s dementia gradually made her into someone he and Will didn’t recognize anymore. He remembers Hazel’s disturbed look after their father lashed out at her when she was trying to help him and how Will sobbed on his shoulder as he began to forget what his mother was like before her mind began to abandon her. Each day Nico could feel himself and Will creeping toward those fates. They could never put Sasha and her family through that.

Sasha kisses each of her dads on the cheek before she goes, and Nico knows she’ll do as asked and ‘find’ them in an hour. He already misses her, and for the first time he wonders about an afterlife, unsure if this goodbye is permanent. 

Nico and Will lay next to each other in bed, a glass of water and a pill on each of their nightstands. Will squeezes Nico’s hand and Nico squeezes his back, both wearing small, satisfied smiles. In the days leading up to this, Nico carried a lump of fear at the bottom of his gut, yet in the moment he finds himself strikingly calm. Both he and Will are at peace with the decisions they made and the lives they lived. Death feels insignificant in the face of all the things they did right. 

When Will lets go of Nico’s hand, his fingers brush over the bandage on Nico’s arm, and Nico automatically eyes Will’s. Throughout their lives the bandages covering their soulmate tattoos have been as much a part of their bodies as their skin. Nico shivers under Will’s touch, and all at once he remembers the agreement they made on their wedding night to reveal their tattoos. His voice is a whisper when he asks Will if he still wants to go through with that. 

Will chews his lip, his nails finding the edge of the bandage as he echoes the question back at Nico. The last sixty-five years are crammed into the silence between them. They lock eyes, the decision made without having to say it, their tattoos as irrelevant now as they always were. Will withdraws his hand, instead lacing it through Nico’s. When Nico kisses him, it is soft and sweet and leaves both of them aching deep in their bones, reminded of that first kiss in their dorm room. 

Will says, “Soulmates or not, I would choose you every time.”

Nico can’t agree more.


End file.
